FESCHUK: Lowry knows his time is coming

If this was a contract year, surely Kyle Lowry would be more concerned. But six months removed from signing a three-year deal worth about $100 million, the Raptors point guard can look at his depressed numbers and shrug.

The 31-year-old's scoring is down - down more than six points a game this season heading into Monday's game against the Nets at the Barclays Center. You can make the case that some of that dip has to do with Lowry's shooting percentage being at a three-year low, or that a big part of it involves Lowry taking fewer free throws per game than he has in five years - which suggests he isn't as wont to throw himself into the painted area with his usual bulldog-ish relentlessness.

But Lowry would tell you most of it comes down to opportunity. With his 32nd birthday less than three months away - and with young understudies Delon Wright and Fred VanVleet having emerged as capable options off the bench - the club has made it a priority to slash Lowry's regular-season minutes this year. It's one of a handful of sweeping changes meant to make Toronto's NBA team a more viable playoff property.

Which is not to say Lowry is fully enjoying the process.

"It sucks. But it's better for the team," Lowry was saying the other day. "I mean, I want to play. Of course I want to be on the floor and play. But it's better for me, long term, (to play less) and it's best for my team. So, for me, as a team player and as a professional, I understand what the endgame is.

"But, yeah, it sucks."

Lowry played an average of 37.4 minutes a game last year, the second-highest rate in the league behind LeBron James. It may or may not have been a coincidence that he also missed 22 regular-season games, and two playoff games, to injury. This year, heading into Monday, Lowry's floor time was down to 32.7 minutes pre game. That's a 4.7-minute spread, which might not seem like a lot on any given evening. But multiply it by 82 and you get 385 minutes. Divide that by his current nightly average your total is approximately 12. In other words, by season's end, at the current rate, that figures to be something like the equivalent of 12 games' worth of wear and tear lopped off Lowry's schedule.

With the season approaching the halfway mark - and with Lowry having played in all 37 of Toronto's games heading into Monday - Lowry said the reduced load has offered a notable boost to the liveliness of his legs. But it hasn't been an easy transition. And it's early.

"The body feels great now," Lowry said. "But ask me in the playoffs, ask me later in the season. The second half is when things usually start to build up, you start to get injuries happening. It's a long season. I won't really know the effects until later on in the year."

It's hard to imagine the effects won't help Toronto's cause - and not only because it ought to improve the odds that Lowry, touch wood, will remain healthy. It has also allowed for the blossoming of Wright and VanVleet, who've emerged as key contributors and who've been rewarded with more minutes as a result.

Not that Raptors coach Dwane Casey, always partial to his veterans, hasn't reserved the right to revert to Lowry if the youngsters aren't carrying the load.

"I said at the beginning of the year if those guys weren't getting it done I keep that (option) to play Kyle more minutes, but those guys have done a great job of producing. Delon and Fred and OG (Anunoby) have done a great job where you can keep Kyle and DeMar's minutes down."

DeRozan's playing time is down modestly, by about one minute a game, on average. And as much as it might seem like a footnote, Casey sees moderating the Lowry-DeRozan workload as "a huge deal."

"I think what people are missing with Kyle is the sacrificing of the number of shots, the number of minutes," Casey said. "I mean the first few games of the year he's champing at the bit wanting to get in there. Every star player I have ever had, whether it's Kevin Garnett or Dirk (Nowitzki), whoever, has talked about, ‘I want to have less minutes.' But when competition comes and the competitive spirit comes out, they are not thinking about minutes.

"I applaud Kyle and DeMar for their sacrifice. Those two guys have taken less minutes. It's going to help them in the long run. It's going to help their career if they want to play more years. And it's helping us now."

Said DeRozan: "I think both of us are playing less minutes than we're accustomed to doing . . . It's definitely beneficial. It took us a while to understand it."

If DeRozan is "definitely" on board, Lowry, for his part, said he's reserving judgment until he sees the ultimate results. In the meantime, it's possible he has occasionally glanced at his numbers and cringed.

"The last six years, I've played some of the top minutes in the league. So this is an adjustment," he said. "But it's all for the playoffs, to have everyone have their confidence, be fresh, and be ready to go . . . It's been working so far. We'll have to see. The playoffs will tell everything. It's all about playoffs for us. That's all it's about. This regular season means nothing to me."